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Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide

This guide was created as an overview of the Linux Operating System, geared toward new users as an exploration tour and getting started guide, with exercises at the end of each chapter.
For more advanced trainees it can be a desktop reference, and a collection of the base knowledge needed to proceed with system and network administration. This book contains many real life examples derived from the author's experience as a Linux system and network administrator, trainer and consultant. They hope these examples will help you to get a better understanding of the Linux system and that you feel encouraged to try out things on your own.

I have some problems with my USB system and getting peripheral devices to work. Here is a list of the problems i am grappling with.

1. I have an external usb hard drive of 160G with three partitions of which i am able to see one when i mount USB.
2. I cannot seem to mount another usb storage device like a USB stick for instance at the same time.

3. I have a blutooth wireless that i can see with the lsusb and edited my xorg.conf file but cannot get it to work despite the wouse being essentially a USB device though not strictly.

Of course i created the mount point in /mnt but i get the message; "mount: /dev/sda1 is not a valid block device" all the devices are fat32. I have tried a number of combinations but there not a lot of progress there.

I also had problems with my usb external hard disk (maxtor 300 GB). First, shortly after I bought the drive, I formatted it under Windummy and it worked for a while, but sometimes I had to put in the usb cable more than 3 times before it was recognized by Opensuse (this was minutes after switching on the hard drive).

Then I decided to format the whole drive via yast2 and I created 4 ext3 partitions. Everthing went fine, I copied data to it, large data, everthing ok... BUT: after a reboot the drive wasn't recognized at all showing

every time I was trying to mount the drive. First, I thought it could be a hard drive crash due to extensive on and off switching, BUT: here is the solution (and I am very lucky to tell: this is not an opensuse problem, but an hardware problem!!!):

1. If not already loaded, load modules "sd_mod" and "scsi_mod" via "modprobe module"
2. If the modules under 1. already loaded and still not working, check if the module "usb-storage" is also loaded
3. Now the most important point: In my hard drive the jumper was set to "CS Enabled" which means "cable select". Change the jumper to "DS=Master". In my case this made the point....
4. Power on the hard drive, wait a few seconds for settle down and plug it into the usb port

Here is my dmesg you will notice that the wd(the disk) section is direct access but i must say that i was able to mount it before i partitioned it but could not mount another usb stick at the same time. But in principle i was able to mount but just unable to see the other partitions now.